Nvidia’s breaking of the market capitalization barrier means ushering in a new world or a new world order. Notwithstanding, the legendary feats in technology, a business history has been written. A stock market history has also been written. While Wall Street celebrates, the question for everyone else is simple; so what? Having achieved whatever it has, now it is imperative for the world to listen to the founder, feel the depths of the tech company and what the two together mean to the world. Jansen Huang spelt it all in a free wheeling interview with Fareed Zakaria.
What Jensen Huang wants us to believe is that it is not just about the stock prices, what is important is that the current moment is turning out to be the watershed moment in human history. He very aptly describes it: “It’s about fundamental rewiring of the world.” If we were to believe that the current seems to be on those lines, then the simple question is, how does Nvidia either does or facilitates this fundamental rewiring. Nvidia makes the “brains” for artificial intelligence. GPUs, their advanced chips power ChatGPT to the complex AI models of Microsoft and Google. In the AI gold rush they are selling all the picks and the shovels.
Huang is convinced that everybody’s job will be impacted, productivity will be boosted dramatically, society would become richer, even if the journey were to be painful. Courtesy AI, a recent World Economic Forum survey found that 41% of employers plan to reduce the workforce by 2030. He says it can help America’s effort to re-industrialise the country. Onshoring manufacturing will strengthen national security, reduce reliance on the likes of TSMC, and open high paying jobs to workers without advanced degrees.
The Nvidia CEO’s most optimistic prediction is the AI’s capability to revolutionise medicine. It would speeden up drug discovery, crack the code of human biology, and even help researchers cure all diseases. AI models are already being trained on the “language” of proteins, chemicals and genetics. Jensen Huang says, robots are just round the corner. We are likely to find intelligent robots on the “VLA models” in the next three to five years. AI may cause some harm on the way, but it would be overwhelmingly positive. The real challenge is that at $4 trillion, Nvidia has the leverage to steer the AI era in its favour. The playbook is known. “Tech giants make utopian promises, capture infrastructure, and then decide who gets access and at what cost.
THE BIG TECH MODEL IS THE ONE OF CONSOLIDATION, DISRUPTION, CONTROL.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.